Techcrunch China 2014 Speaker Lineup: Hopes For Cryptocurrency Still High In China

The TechCrunch International Event in Beijing is now less than 3 weeks away! From August 11 to 12, the event will feature talks, roundtable discussions and startup pitches. Guests to take stage this time range from well-known hardware technologists, high-profile venture capitalists to rising entrepreneurs.

A new generation of bitcoin startups are coming of age with millions of backings from venture capitalists. Meanwhile China is tightening controls on bitcoin as speculation has led to price spike. What’s next for bitcoin? Five prominent figures in the bitcoin business will share their insights at TechCrunch China.

Rui Ma, Venture Partner at 500 Startup

Rui Ma is a Venture Partner at 500 Startups, a leading accelerator and seed investment fund in technology companies, where she is in charge of all investment activity in the Greater China region. Prior to 500 Startups, she worked for nearly a decade in private equity and mergers & acquisitions roles at the Raine Group, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch in both Silicon Valley and China. She is based in Beijing and has been living and working in China since 2007.

Rui holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley, and is in the process of completing a Master degree in Education from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as well as an Executive MBA from INSEAD and Tsinghua University. She writes frequently on technology and is a regular contributor to Forbes.com, TheNextWeb, TechinAsia and Coindesk.

Yin Chen, Co-Founder and CTO of Melotic

Yin Chen is the cofounder and the CTO of Melotic. Prior to Melotic, Yin cofounded Xiachufang, China’s leading recipe community. He has also worked at Douban, a social interest network with over 75 million users, and Meituan, China’s leading online-to-offline business company. Yin has a Bachelors in Computer Science from Wuhan University and a Masters in Computer Science from Peking University.

Leon Li, Founder and CEO of Huobi

Leon Li (Li Lin), the founder and CEO of Huobi.com, graduated from China’s prestigious Tsinghua University in master degree of automation engineering and started his career at Oracle before becoming an entrepreneur in 2009. He has started a number of internet companies and projects related to SNS and vertical search, including Renrenzhe, China’s second largest independent lifestyle search site. In 2013, Li founded Huobi, a cryptocurrency trading platform.

Star Xu Founder and CEO of OKCoin

Star Xu is the founder and CEO of OKCoin, now the largest Bitcoin and Litecoin exchange. Star received his Masters Degree in Mathematics from Renmin University and subsequently worked at Yahoo before becoming the Chief Technical Officer at DocIn.com. After gaining an interest in Bitcoin in 2012 and using some of the existing exchanges at the time, he believed he could offer a better service and founded OKCoin in June 2013.

Richmond Teo, Co-Founder and CEO, Asia of itBit

Rich Teo is the co-founder and CEO Asia of itBit. He was previously a Principal at Cedar Hill Capital Partners and a Financial Analyst at Citigroup’s investment banking division in New York. He received a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) from the University of Michigan Schoolof Business.